[thu2111]

There was fury about Belgian authorities taking away sandwiches etc from UK lorry drivers

That happened once and people were right to be furious because the Dutch customs guy was a dick. No rule requires him to confiscate the lunch of lorry drivers and then say "Welcome to Brexit". It's that kind of nasty backstabbing pettiness that makes EU ideology so deeply unattractive that the UK voted to leave.

Nonetheless it's hilarious that so far despite the EU's best efforts to create as many problems as possible via "work to rule" type approaches, the media focuses on that. The EU-loving media class spent years telling people that if the UK dared to leave this horrible organisation there'd be immediate shortages of medicine. Now they have to hype up stories about dickish border guards whilst desperately trying to hide the fact that literally weeks after Brexit happened there are medicine shortages in the EU. People who argued against Brexit have been wrong about so many things so far I shouldn't be surprised but that one still takes the biscuit.

[mytailorisrich]

> No rule requires him to confiscate the lunch of lorry drivers and then say "Welcome to Brexit"

Actually, a rule does require him to confiscate any meat product that someone might try to bring into the EU [1] (incidentally I believe that the USA have the same rule), which is what happened: It was a ham sandwich.

If you watch the video the driver was very surprised. Personally I took the customs guy's reply "welcome to Brexit" as a humorous but factual and to the point explanation.

[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/carry/meat-dair....

[thu2111]

The goal of those rules is to stop people importing meat and selling it, not workers eating their lunch.

Look, this is very simple: if the EU's rules require confiscating the lunch of people who are trying to do business, then the rules are wrong and should be fixed. Blaming Brexit or saying "the USA does it too" isn't a great answer when it'd be so easy to fix this.

I think the main thing I've been learning about import/export rules in/out of the EU in the past few weeks is how much life must have been sucking for years for people trying to trade with us who aren't physically in Europe. A huge number of the rules that are tripping people up are stuff that's just taken to an absurd bureaucratic extreme, like the guys who couldn't sell their fish because the Latin name on a form had a spelling error, or the others who needed to translate their product description into every single European language before they could put their goods on a lorry.

The EU could easily fix all these things and make the lives of not only Brits but everyone else easier too, but the so-called single market is basically the only argument they have for why a country should join the EU. The EU has created a perverse incentive for itself to make selling things to it as convoluted and painful as possible. That is ultimately bad for everyone, but especially for people who live and work in member states.

[melomal]

> The goal of those rules is to stop people importing meat and selling it, not workers eating their lunch.

How did Covid start and spread? Through movement of infected meat and people. I also think you really don't understand the job of a border controller.

[thu2111]

Movement of infected meat? Where did you get that from? I have been reading about COVID every day for the last year and never saw anyone make that claim before, so this looks like motivated reasoning. Are you thinking of wet markets? The whole "people eating bats/civets" theory fell out of favour ages ago, and of course none of those animals crossed borders anyway.

As for spread of people, truckers have been allowed to cross borders even when they've been closed the whole time, as otherwise supply chains would collapse. So it's irrelevant to this case. The guy wasn't doing a COVID check.

I also think you really don't understand the job of a border controller.

I think I do! Political trolling and lunch confiscation are definitely not components of it.

[melomal]

That's like saying a personal baggie of cocaine is for lunch therefore you should not confiscate it. If it's on the list of no-entry then it's on there for a reason.